1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print data generation apparatus and control method therefor, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is an imposition application, into which is input a manuscript that is in a vector format, which may include an image data or Portable Document Format (PDF), and which produces a layout suitable for printing. Such an imposition application is capable, for example, of imposing four A5 size document pages in an A3 extended printing paper, and obtaining four finished printouts from one sheet of printing paper, by trimming the printing paper. In such a circumstance, the layout is performed after the printing, in accordance with a printer's marks that are comprised in the trimming step, and which provide a guideline for the trimming.
There may also be a circumstance in which a printing page is folded down the middle and saddle stitched, making a quarto, or once more, making an octavo, rather than straightforwardly lining up the pages and trimming them, and in such a circumstance, the printer's marks are printed on three sides of the document page. Note that the term “octavo” represents giving a quarto an additional fold. It is possible to obtain a desired finish by trimming in accordance with the printer's marks; see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-312083, for example.
When simultaneously trimming a plurality of printing sheets, or when fold processing a printing sheet and trimming the printing sheet on three sides, it is possible that the printing sheet may become misaligned. For this reason, the untrimmed printing sheet includes a margin in preparation to a misalignment during the trimming step. The margin is also known as a “bleed.” Leaving a gap between the finished size and the printer's marks that has the width of the bleed when printing will ensure that the printer's marks are not left behind even if the printing sheet is misaligned in trimming.
As trimming involves a plurality of printing sheets stacked together and trimmed all at once, rather than trimming each individual printing sheet one at a time, it would actually be just as well to have the printer's marks on only the first printing sheet, although the printer's marks are printed in the same place on all of the printing sheets. Consequently, it is possible that the printer's marks may be left on the printed material after trimming, due to misalignment in the printing step, if the bleed is of a narrow width and the printer's marks are positioned near the finished print size.
With a process including a folding process, there may be significant misalignment resulting from a fold misalignment, in addition to off-registration during printing. Even if the trimming position is within the bleed margin, an addition of a fold misalignment heightens the possibility of a page having the printer's marks left untrimmed. Such a misalignment may occur when using an offline finisher for trimming process or folding process. The reason is that a printed material that is printed on a print apparatus is carried by hand to the offline finisher and positioned such that the trimming step or the folding step may be performed.
Accordingly, the conventional addition of the printer's marks, either to all printed pages, or to all of the printed pages for which folding processing is necessitated, raises a risk of the printer's marks remaining within the printed material after trimming, due to a misalignment in the trimming step or the folding step.